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I had understood that the tiny snippets provided by platforms have long been considered consistent with fair use or fair dealing exemptions. Similarly, when RNZ does its morning roundup of what's on the country's front-pages and reads out the headlines.

If the licensing fee is set at a fixed rate high enough to 'save the media', expect platforms to block links rather than pay. Potential for unpredictable and high levies in Canada have had the platforms stop providing news altogether. And I understand that Meta no longer views news as being valuable to the site anyway: clicks away from Facebook don't help Facebook but do help the linked-to papers.

If the fee is set as per-use, expect platforms to pull back because they have no control over the costs - it's determined by how often users put up links, and could wind up being high.

If the fee is set at a level low enough that platforms are happy to pay, it's not likely to do much to help media.

And all of it is misguided. If there's public benefit, why foist the burden onto platforms to provide?

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